I don't have the money to buy the book, so I can't really see the rest of what he says there. Which fossils were you speaking of again?

I'm sure you could find it at a library. He discusses a set of 3.6 million year old footprints, Lucy, AL 444-2, the Taung Child, Mrs Ples, KNM ER 1813, KMN ER 1470, Twiggy, Java Man, Peking Man, and the Turkana Boy.

Good point. My bad on the "professor at..." business. However, his statements about "non-sequence" and "cytochrome-c" were what I was aiming for.

Wile's paper is remarkable for how much misinformation it packs into a few pages. The so-called "non-sequence" argument is refuted by the chapter in the Dawkins book I already mentioned, which documents gradual change form Lucy to us. Contrary to what Wile says, the research on cytochrome c provides strong evidence for common descent (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_o ... tochrome_c)

That's an interesting comment, given that there are zero experiments supporting the creationist position. But in fact, there are many experiments in the field of evolutionary development. There was an interesting book review on this subject in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/1 ... rbo_books1). The reveiwer noted that "Evo devo’s first big finding is that all animals are built from essentially the same genes."

AgentBunni wrote:I dunno...looks like a research project to me. The students are asked to give the ages of the fossils based on what evolutionists have said about the ages, but they can't simply because different evolutionists have said different things. What it is saying is that evolutionists can't agree on the age of fossils. They aren't doing the work themselves, they are looking at other people's work for answers.

As far as I read it they are given one fossil and asked to identify and map it on the evolutionary tree. But even if you are right, the fact that the complete sequence of the human lineage is not perfectly known (the number of fossils are limited, paleontologist are known for not being very good at sharing their finds) does not mean anything with respect to evolution in general. This experience shows mostly that human paleontology is complicated, changing, maybe that textbook are not great, and maybe the same about those students in an unnamed university/college.

The cytC data is a bit more perplexing since he does not provide where he gets his data from. I wonder where he got his data, and how he estimated the evolution's prediction. In his blog he seems to give reference (I give him a big thumbs up for that) but in this quite short pamphlet that you seem to consider relevant, it is interesting to note that beyond quotes (out of context, that can be misleading) the little data presented do not comes with any relevant quotes.Because of that it is hard to give it too much thought.

I agree. Without sources, it seems to lose much of its credibility. All I have to say is, "good luck finding a source for that one." It's difficult to find any sources for those things these days :/[/quote]The sequences prot and nucleotide should be available in NCBI. Providing the source and how the calculation has been done should not be that complicated. That is why I very much doubt his argument.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

futurezoologist wrote:Can anyone come up with any solid, completely unexplainable arguments that defy evolution with our current scientific understanding of the issue.

Note: Please do not run at me and bash me with your bibles.

I do have a problem with "Evolution Theory".

Why must I presume life, species, animals, cells, etc. all originate from a common source???

This is an invalid suspicion. What makes scientists/philosophers/thinkers believe that all life (or the universe itself) originates from a singularity? This is absolutism and I cannot accept it.

I think the truth is: that, the "best" scientists throughout human history simply do not know the origin of the universe or life itself. So it intellectually is dishonest to put random quantifiers on life, such as: "Life is 4.5 billion years old". This statement is unqualified and superfluous. What magically brought life or the universe into existence?

Or has life AND the universe "always existed"?

These types of questions neither scientists nor biologists can ask or answer.

These types of questions actually are beyond human understanding to know.

you are hardly the only one, but let's see if you can bring anything new and/or relevant to the discussion...

Atheaut wrote:Why must I presume life, species, animals, cells, etc. all originate from a common source???This is an invalid suspicion.

There is quite a large body of evidence for that, which boils down to the simple fact that all life forms that are observed rely on very similar mechanisms (DNA to store genetic information, RNA intermediates, quasi universal genetic code, ribosomes doing the RNA to protein translation, and many more( that have no particular reason to be universal. They do the job, but other molecules could have done it as well, and there are no compelling reason why that particular set of mechanisms should be the only one. So the simple explanation is that this was the particular set of mechanisms that worked for the ancestor of life as we now know it.That is based on that that scientist assume that all life originate from one single source. AFAIK many competing life forms based on different chemistry might have existed, but there is only one branch that flourished until now. Would you care to bring anything that would disprove this assumption? Or another equally simple solution that would explain that arbitrary universality of the basic building blocks of life?

Atheaut wrote:What makes scientists/philosophers/thinkers believe that all life (or the universe itself) originates from a singularity? This is absolutism and I cannot accept it.

This is SPARTAMore seriously, this has nothing[b] to do with evolution, and all to do with astrophysics. And that is a bit far from my own field to give you all the accurate answers. However the simple explanation is that in whatever direction the sky is observed, the stars appears to be moving away from us. Which means that if you measure speed, make a few assumptions about the stability of said speed and stability of what is observed* we can estimate the age of the universe and its original size. The model has been refined to explain the current observations, but once again if you can provide an alternative set of explanation that explains the same observations about our physical world without the involvement of sky pixies you can do that and try to convince people that your model (that will I am sure not involve a singularity) is better.

Atheaut wrote:I think the truth is: that, the "best" scientists throughout human history simply [b]do not know the origin of the universe or life itself. So it intellectually is dishonest to put random quantifiers on life, such as: "Life is 4.5 billion years old". This statement is unqualified and superfluous. What magically brought life or the universe into existence?

Well the exact time of the apparition of life sure is only an estimate, but unlike your assertions it has not been pulled out one scientist a$$ just because (s)he liked big round numbers. There is once again quite a few facts and evidence to back up those numbers (radioactive decay, existence of stromatolites etc...) so those qualifiers are far from random. And remember that the theory of evolution:1- Has nothing to say about how life appeared. That is a different question, and people are still studying it, but it is quite hard to find funding for projects that needs an entire planetary surface to be sterile, and might last a few millions if not billion years to get a reasonable chance of success2- Would be equally valid in its most general form for any form of life that use a physical mechanism to transfer information from one generation to the next (evolution of computer programs can and is studied)

Atheaut wrote:Or has life AND the universe "always existed"?These types of questions neither scientists nor biologists can ask or answer.These types of questions actually are beyond human understanding to know.Are they not??

You think? I don't. And I want to have a chance at finding an answer that is why I am in research. But with your outlook on life there is indeed very little chance that we will learn anything.

So in short except your willful ignorance and your convictions that other must be wrong because you either refuse to understand and/or accept scientific evidences you did not bring anything new to this discussion. We have simply added evidence that there is one more scientifically illiterate person on earth. Congratulations, you belong to the majority, but unlike many, there are evidence that the probability is high that it stems more from your own failings to educate yourself with the resources that are available from your computer and the education you received (you have both since you can write better than many and obviously have access to the internet to boast your ignorance for the whole world to see) than from a lack of opportunity to ever get access to education.

*you can deny that there ever was a yesterday, and believe that the world was created 5 minutes ago with all memories etc embedded to make us believe that it was always as we perceive it, but if this is the kind of philosophy that you like to entertain, there is not very much to discuss anyway, is it?

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

Atheaut wrote:Why must I presume life, species, animals, cells, etc. all originate from a common source???This is an invalid suspicion.

There, you just say that the scientifically accepted paradigm is invalid, which in my book is synonymous with wrong.And you also said in relation with scientifically backed up estimation about the age of life on our earth:

Atheaut wrote:This statement is unqualified and superfluous.

So when I read that:

Atheaut wrote:By the way, nowhere did I "disagree" with Scientific Evidence.That is another mistake of your own making.

I can't help wondering if you read what you wrote. And I would like to point out the definition of paradigm in the scientific/epistemological sense. Wikipedia will do:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParadigmAnd then I wonder what that means

Atheaut wrote:I accept Scientific Evidence as Paradigm

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

Origin to ALL life is superfluous though. To presume that humanity, not unlike shellfish, not unlike bacteria… all "evolved" from a "common source" is superfluous. Why? Because the reasoning is Inductive, not Deductive.

First Scientists would have to donate more definition and proof to Evolutionary Theory.

Here we could go into what force, whether internal/external, "guides" Evolutionary direction.

In this dispute here, that is beside-the-point…

I am not arguing against Evidence at all; I am doubting the presumptions and premises from whence they all arise. I do not believe in "common origin" anymore than "uncommon origin" because I refuse to speculate beyond what I know to become true or false. This is a fact of deductive logic. I cannot prove what I cannot know, understand? With respect to "common origin" of (all) sentient and non-sentient life, I have NO REASON WHATSOEVER to believe a source, commonality, or even a beginning.

I simply can presume that "life always had existed" and "time is infinite".

Therefore is no "beginning" or "end" to life as a phenomenon.

I also have no reason to believe that a skull is ~4.5 billion years old compared to ~3 billion or ~3 million. These ranges of time seem inaccurate. I want specifics, details. I want to know the exact dates, not guesses and estimates. But that is what "Scientific Evidence" is all about, mere guesswork. I want something more "substantial", even better evidence. I also want better theories.

My point was that, I do not see why I should presuppose "common" origin over "uncommon" origin…

Convince me, if you like, I want to hear your reasoning on this too.

I can see the similarities between Great Apes and man. That is too obvious to deny. Humans and Apes share the same form: two arms, two legs, Mammals, opposable thumbs, etc. But similar form still does not address this issue (of Evolution).

I see, so what you want are that calendars fossilized with the skull to allow us to date everything exactly. And if those ancestarl bacteria could have worn a watch on their pili that would be good too...

Scientist can only estimate dates in the deep past, because well there were no calendars or watch conveniently available to fossilize, and what was there (isotopes of different atoms) had quite some time to decay in a few billions years, so accuracy is limited, but clear distinctions are made between billions and millions of years. What you want is impossible.

I already addressed the question of why we believe that life as a common origin, find yourself a textbook if you want more details, a forum is not the place to write a book, but resources are available if you are really as interested in the subject as you claim to be.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)